I didn’t hear the answer on the other side of the door, but he opened it and Aiana hurried in. She immediately began speaking in Balanquan, and a tense conversation ensued. I couldn’t understand it—their language was still a puzzle to me—but two words came through very clearly: Adelaide and Cedric.

   I pushed open the bedroom door and rushed forward. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

   Aiana stopped mid-sentence. She looked at Grant, she looked at me, and then she looked back at him. Her face darkened, and she barked something to him that didn’t sound complimentary. He answered back, and I interrupted before she could respond.

   “Enough! Fight later. Tell me what’s happened to Adelaide and Cedric. And speak Osfridian.”

   Aiana kept her eyes on Grant for several more seconds and then slowly turned to me. She spoke stiffly at first and then fell into the urgency of her story. “Something happened in Hadisen. Silas is back—and he brought Warren Doyle and some of his men. They’re being held at the jail, and Cedric will join them once he’s well enough to travel. Silas found them in the middle of a fight and took everyone into custody. Cedric and Warren each claim they were attacked by the other.”

   “Why wouldn’t Cedric be well enough to travel?” I demanded.

   “They don’t know who started the fight, but they know who finished it. Cedric was outnumbered and took a beating, but he’ll be okay. And Adelaide’s fine . . . but . . .”

   “But what? More than this?” I exclaimed. I wanted to go demand a boat take me over the bay right now.

   “Did you know . . .” Aiana considered her words carefully. “Did you know about Adelaide’s background?”

   “She was a maid for some grand lady.”

   “Well, they’re saying, she is—or was—the grand lady. A noble. Does the name Witmore or Rothford mean anything to you?”

   “The Rothford earldom is one of the oldest, and it’s held by the Witmore family,” I said, reciting my history instructor’s words. “But there’s absolutely no way—” I groaned and walked away, putting a hand to my forehead. I was an idiot. “Of course. Of course she is.” Adelaide had come to us knowing how to use seven different forks, but she hadn’t been able to brush her own hair. The amazing turnaround in her grades hadn’t been a turnaround at all. She’d been faking until then.

   Grant leaned against the wall, arms folded across his chest. “Well, I didn’t see that coming, but does it change anything?”

   “It has people’s attention. I guess we’ll see what that’s worth when she gets back with Cedric. Silas expects them to come by water in a couple of days. I’m surprised he hasn’t stopped by yet.” Aiana glanced around, as though she expected Silas to materialize out of thin air. “You’d better watch out—he’s not going to take all of this as well as I did.”

   “Really? That was taking it well?” asked Grant. “I’d hate to see when you don’t. I didn’t even hear a manasta when you came in.”

   I rested against the wall too, close to Grant but not touching. “Warren’s up to something. First Tamsin and then . . .” I lost track of what I’d been about to say. My mind had jumped somewhere else, clutching at a fragile thread. “Manasta.”

   “Manasta,” Grant and Aiana both repeated at the same time, correcting my pronunciation.

   I went to the bedroom and returned with a Lorandian version of the letter. Grant and I didn’t read poetry in bed, but sometimes we tried to puzzle this code. “Manasta means ‘greetings,’ right?” I pointed at the letter’s first line. “Ma nahz taback. Do you hear it? Manasta is in there. Wouldn’t you open a letter that way? I mean, it’s not a perfect match. The back syllable is still there, and—”

   “What’s the next word after that?” interrupted Grant.

   “Dapine. It means ‘rabbit.’”

   “Forget the meaning,” he said. “Read those words again. Use your best Lorandian pronunciation.”

   “Ma nahz taback dapine.”

   “Bakda,” said Aiana. She looked at Grant. “Or bakda?” There was a very slight shift in her tone the second time.

   “Bakda,” he said, with a third tone. “Manasta, bakda.”

   “What is that?” I asked.

   “‘Greetings, friend.’” He had that light in his eyes, the one that said he was about to go on the hunt again. “Mirabel, you’ve broken the code.”

CHAPTER 30

   TRANSLATING THE LETTER WAS PAINSTAKING WORK. Grant and Aiana had to sit apart from me and listen as I read, focusing strictly on the sounds and how they could be strung together into Balanquan words. Equally complicated was that there was no word-for-word substitution. One Lorandian word might contain all the sounds for two Balanquan words. Or maybe one Lorandian word contained half a Balanquan word that was continued in the next Lorandian word. On top of it all, we had to take the Balanquan tonal and stress differences into account. So, even when Grant and Aiana were certain they’d parsed a Balanquan word, they had to puzzle out which meaning it had.

   We were bleary-eyed by the time we finished, and even then, the letter still had holes we couldn’t decipher. People’s names had been swapped with numbers, and Grant said the traitors probably had a key that listed them all. The writer also hadn’t focused much on grammar or style, so I tried my best to clean it up and add punctuation.

   Greetings, friend. We have had occasional detection. 17 is replacing lost goods and still sending gold. He will supervise usual transfer so that you can deliver to green mountain.

   How long until your _____ sees more gold? We need additional supplies and _____ start soldier payroll. Important to stay on schedule. First attack must be autumn. 34 is creating final schedule and will send out with _____ seekers on healing night. Send your gold to bay land if you can. If _____ then we will come to you in gold land.